Windows XP Professional vs Windows XP Media Center Edition

morbidangel

Just wondering what the difference is between these - is XP Media Edition just some special edition of XP Professional or what? I'm on XP professional at the moment but looking around for a laptop and the Dells seem to have the XP Media Center Edition cheaper than XP Professional, so I'm just wondering what are the pros and cons of choosing one over the other, or are they pretty much the same package?

GerardKeating

morbidangel wrote:

Just wondering what the difference is between these - is XP Media Edition just some special edition of XP Professional or what? I'm on XP professional at the moment but looking around for a laptop and the Dells seem to have the XP Media Center Edition cheaper than XP Professional, so I'm just wondering what are the pros and cons of choosing one over the other, or are they pretty much the same package?

MCE is more like XP-Home than XP-Pro.

It has all the extra shiny media TV bits, but the limitations of Home, in that when you set it up, it can join a domain, but no options to change this later.

DaRo

morbidangel wrote:

Just wondering what the difference is between these - is XP Media Edition just some special edition of XP Professional or what? I'm on XP professional at the moment but looking around for a laptop and the Dells seem to have the XP Media Center Edition cheaper than XP Professional, so I'm just wondering what are the pros and cons of choosing one over the other, or are they pretty much the same package?

I dont know the difference between XP Media Center Edition(strange sys) and XP Home edition but u should read about Home Vs Pro.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article10-002

irlrobins

Moving to windows forum

morbidangel

GerardKeating wrote:

MCE is more like XP-Home than XP-Pro.

It has all the extra shiny media TV bits, but the limitations of Home, in that when you set it up, it can join a domain, but no options to change this later.

Wot do you mean by joining a domain? Would this effect wireless broadband connection on a laptop when connecting from different areas of the country for example, or am I completely off the mark here?!

juliuspret

I think MCE has a shiny front end built on WinXP Pro.

mathias

Win MCE is a meant for HTPC's , thats Home Theatre PC's and is primarily made to look good and be usable on big TV's .
It is intended to work with Microsofts own Remote control as opposed to a Keyboard or mouse when used with a Media Centre PC and connected to a large TV.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=309575

Here are some links to sites that have pictures of how the system looks ,

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/default.mspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Media_Center_Edition

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mce2005.asp


In comparison to ordinary XP home or Pro the software is very restricted in terms of network ability and is also extremely picky about the hardware it will work with.
It has driver issues also in that it must have MCE drivers for certain hardware.

For a Media Centre it works really well , as a business operating system or for general PC use it sucks , so unless you intend using it for a Media Centre , stick with XP home or Pro.

Actually no, its closer to Pro than Home. The only thing it can't do is join a domain but still supports Remote Desktop, dual processing and Group Policy.

So it retains all of the Pro functionality bar the domain support. I have a laptop with MCE so observed this closely, lol.